10 Types of Visual Content Your Company Should Be Creating

You’ve probably already heard by now that visual content is a must for your content marketing strategy, no matter what industry you’re in. This year, brand publishers everywhere are looking to create more visually appealing content in line with a more aggressive content marketing strategy.

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s latest report on B2C content marleting trends, 73% of content creators plan to focus on creating more engaging content this year, while 55% are specifically focusing on creating more visual content.

The reasons to do so, though, may be many. You might be thinking, “I don’t have the budget for a graphic designer,” “I don’t have the design skills to create visual content” or “I don’t have the time to invest in it”…

The good news is that there are simple drag-and-drop tools available now that can get you creating all types of stellar visual content in no time.

This is where Visme comes in. With this easy-to-use tool, you can create any of the following content for your blog, site or marketing materials with little to no design experience.

Here are a few things we created with Visme to give you some inspiration for your own visual marketing strategy:

1 Infographics

One of the most popular visual content formats out there today is the infographic. Your visual content marketing strategy wouldn’t be complete without it. Not only do infographics communicate a ton of information in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand manner, but they are also one of the most shared pieces of visual content.

Take, for example, this colorful interactive infographic we created with Visme on the top travel destinations in the world. Not only does it give the reader several pages’ worth of useful tips in a single glance, it also gives readers a virtual tour of the city by providing direct links to videos, three-day guides and booking options.

2 Memes and Branded Quotes

Another must-have visual content type is the meme and/or branded quote. Not only do these do particularly well on social media in terms of shares, but they also get audience members to actively engage and build an emotional connection with them through meaningful quotes reinforced by eye-catching visuals. Statistics show that detailed images catch the attention of up to 67% of target audience members.

In this case, we used big, bold text in combination with an impactful image to attract viewers’ attention as they scroll down their feeds. Believe it or not, these pithy messages go a long way in building up your credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of your social media followers. You can also build your brand by placing your logo in an unintrusive place such as one of the corners of the image.

3 Interesting Data Visualizations

There is no doubt that interesting and revealing data visualizations, such as those seen here, are a surefire way to get many eyes on your content and, in the process, your brand name.

Many content creators, however, stop short of creating original content with viral potential for fear that they require advanced statistical or mathematical abilities to create a really informative data visualization.

The truth is that with the right data and conceptual planning, you can also create your own visually appealing data visualizations using simple tools such as Visme. (For more information, you can check out this useful post on finding newsworthy stories in numbers or this post on creating interactive content with recent data.)

For example, in the visual piece above, we created a simple line chart with up-to-date data that could be of interest to a wide range of viewers.

4 Visual Representations

Images have the power to not only speak volumes, but also speak more loudly than words.

Consider, for example, the visual representation above. With just a single image, you can send a powerful message that says so much more than a sentence like: “the difference between knowledge and experience is that knowledge is theoretical and, therefore, not useful until we can connect the dots between different types of concepts.”

These types of images are especially useful when attempting to elucidate a complex concept or make a “boring” topic interesting to a wider population.

5 Annotated Screenshots

Tutorials and step-by-step guides are some of the most sought-after content out there today. And the perfect visual complement to written explanations of a process are annotated screenshots like the one seen above.

With a drag-and-drop program like Visme, these are easy to create within minutes. All you have to do is use the Shapes tool to insert rectangles and arrows and the Text tool to insert descriptions. By inserting an annotated screenshot with clear labels, a user can grasp a concept or master the tools of an application in a fraction of the time it takes them to understand an explanatory paragraph with no visuals.

6 Presentations

With the availability of so many content-sharing sites out there like SlideShare, the thought of having your content remain within your boardroom or classroom is a thing of the past.

Now, you can easily upload your slide deck to an online site or share the URL to your Visme presentation to dramatically increase the global reach of your content.

Just take a look at how we repurposed this popular blog post into an engaging visual presentation, seen above.

You can do the same with all your best-performing, text-based posts to make them even more appealing to a broader audience.

7 Videos

Videos are not only one of the most popular visual content formats on the Web today, they are also one of the most effective link-building tools.

This study by SEOmoz, for example, found that posts with video had three times more links than those without it. This seems to indicate that video is useful not only for captivating audiences but also creating share-worthy content.

The piece above, for example, combines footage, animation, text and screenshots in an attractive video that can be shared on all the major social media platforms, which are increasingly favoring video content, especially autoplay videos, in their news feeds.

8 Strong Calls to Action

One of the most effective ways to motivate visitors to take a certain action–whether to sign up, buy or donate–is to use calls to action.

By implementing graphic design principles, such as establishing a visual hierarchy and creating contrast using appropriate colors and properly scaling elements, you can greatly influence visitors’ decisions in an almost subconscious way.

The call to action above, for example, applies all these principles to entice readers and then move them to take a specific action (in this case, clicking a button that will lead them to a landing page).

9 Visual Tips and How-To’s

Graphic tips, hacks and how-to’s, like the one above constitute another type of visual content which your audience will thank you for. These not only serve to build and deepen the emotional connection with audience members by helping them in a concrete way, they also boost brand recognition and help followers remember your brand some time down the road, when they might be in need of your product or service.

If, for example, you’re offering an online tool for creating visual content (like Visme does), then you could offer your expertise in the field of visual content creation. Also, tricks and hacks on how to best use your product or service to get the most out of it is also much appreciated by users.

10 Thought-Provoking Questions

Lastly, you can also engage your audience members by posing thought-provoking questions to incite comments and discussions around a certain topic.

For example, if you really want to know your audience or get them to stop what they’re doing for a second, you could ask them a question that is relevant to almost anyone, such as, “If you could go back in time and change a decision you made, what would it be?”

How about your visual content marketing strategy? Do you know of any other visual content types not covered here? We would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Just drop us a line in the comments section below, and we’ll get back to you.

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About the Author

Nayomi Chibana is a journalist and writer for Visme’s Visual Learning Center. She has an M.A. in Journalism and Media from the University of Hamburg in Germany and was an editor of a leading Latin American political investigative magazine for several years. She has a passion for researching trends in interactive longform media.

8 responses to “10 Types of Visual Content Your Company Should Be Creating”

Nice article. Consist of some great ideas. I try to incorporate some of these ideas when I write on my blog and I must tell u that it really works. Here’s my blog. Do pop in and share your opinion. http://www.csrcafe.com/

Nayomi Chibana, thanks for this amazing post. You helped me finding out some new ideas for visual contents which I never explored. I was limited only in Info-graphics and videos, but this post gave some of the new tips which I am going to work on very soon. Thanks for this post and the tips.